In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of falling away from faith. He emphasizes that one cannot fall away from a place they have never been, suggesting that those who have truly experienced faith in Jesus can potentially fall away. The preacher also references John Calvin's belief that some may have only had a superficial understanding of faith. He highlights the importance of faith being accompanied by works, using the analogy of a model airplane that is useless without being put into action. The sermon concludes with a reminder that Christians have the free will to choose their path and warns against departing from Jesus.

Let's begin understanding Hebrews 6. Hebrews, of course, was written to believers, specifically Jewish believers, and there is some suggestion of falling away, being, of falling away from belief in Jesus as the Messiah and trying to go back under the law. Now, this kind of thing was more a species of epistles like the Galatians than it was Hebrews. In Galatians, of course, they were practicing a form of hard unionism. They were not really legalists, saying that you're saved by the law, but they were saying you're saved by keeping the law in addition to Jesus. Well, are we saved by Him? We should never be saved by works, and again, Christians do works because they've been saved, not to get saved. However, Hebrews was written to Jewish believers, and there was some danger of people going back to Judaism in some ways, but not in the same way as Galatians. I'm going to read from the Greek text of Hebrews chapter 6. We'll be reading verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. They are appointed archaic to Christ. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to the truities, not learning again a foundation of repentance from dead works and a faith towards God, with instruction about absolution, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Septismon, Didaeus, Epiphasos, Peteron, Anastasios, Nechron, and Chromatos, and John. So he begins. He talks about people who've been saved, and they need to lay this particular foundation. But immediately after that, he introduces what goes on. And he begins with the Greek word, ger. The Greek word, ger, means for. For. That is, because these other things have happened, let's press on. And he begins talking along the following lines. He says, Again, means for. The Greek word is not a subjunctive or a conditional subjunctive, but it does imply the possibility that something can go wrong, that it could happen. It's not a subjunctive saying it sounds like it'll happen. It affirmatively says it's conditional. But then it goes on beyond this. It's impossible to renew them. A dinosaur. This is the same word as we have in chapter 6, verse 18, saying God cannot be false. Impossible. A dinosaur. It becomes so impossible for these people to be renewed that it would mean God was false, but they could be, because it's the same thing. God cannot be false, but neither can these kinds of people be renewed. What is that talking about? We only have one kind of thing where people cannot be renewed. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Now, what is this? In its context, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit had to do with the Pharisees, or the religious leaders of Jesus' day, attributing to Satan that which they knew was of God. They knew it was of God. They didn't think it was of God. They knew it was of God. Right? And the parable of the finger, it says clearly in Matthew, for they knew he spoke the parable of them. So they knew it was of God, but then knowing it was of God, they said it was of Satan in such a way as to mislead others away from the way of salvation. Now, that's changing trades. You know something is of God. You know it is. But for your own interest, you say it isn't in such a manner as to mislead others away from the truth that's going to bring them into some destruction. In its context, that was a description of the impregnable sea. We don't know at what point the Holy Spirit leaves someone. A backslider does not know at what point that happens. When King Saul went the way he did, he didn't notice the Spirit left him, did he? Moreover, he continues to prophesy and fall among the prophets. Remember, the gifts and forming of God go forth without repentance. The Spirit may have been on him in terms of the pouring out of the Spirit on the church and some of the gifts of ministry and so on, but it was not inside of him anymore. Lord, did we not do this, that in your name? I never knew you. Matthew 7.22 We don't know at what point that happens, but there is a possibility of someone, a backslide, so irrepentantly and so far, refusing to come back to Jesus, that they have come to a place where they've fasted in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can get the backslider continually, continually and continually. When someone falls away from the Lord, they have no peace in themselves, they have no peace in their prayer life, they have no peace in anything. And you keep resisting and resisting and resisting. People like that will ultimately, ultimately not be saved. They'll go so far there's no coming back. Now, that can happen. That can happen. You can actually reach that point. Now, it's not easy. But there are people who have become so backwards that they know the truth, but yet they will not allow their wives or their children, their wives to bring their children up in the church. Don't take them to church, don't take them to Sunday school, don't take the kids with you. There's people like that. There's people who have husbands or wives who are so backwards that they will actually lead their own children away from the truth, even though they themselves know the truth. This is a terrible kind of sin. There is some basis to associate this with fasting in the Holy Spirit, at least some basis to do that. But let's go on beyond this. The case of those who have once been enlightened. Sotus centes is the Greek word. Sotus centes. The idea is, is that they have seen the light or they have come to the light. It's not some abstract thing. They know what it is. They know exactly what it is. Adonaton gertos apex, sotus centes, gesumenus te, tes, doreas tes, eporegnon, kai, metoxes, genesentes, plumatos, aegion. Once being enlightened and tasting of the dorea, the gift, and the heavenly, not really the heavenly experience, but the heavenly, and sharers or partakers, more sharers, they are becoming, it's not that they have changed, but they are becoming ongoing, present, continuous, active. Becoming like that. It was the Spirit. There is no way that these people who had been actually experiencing the Holy Spirit, and in contact with their heavenly destination, there is no way you can say that this is not about believing. No way. It's about believing. It's people who have actually been saved. They came to the light. They came to the sotus centes. I saw the light, the true light of coming into the world by the light of the living man. They came to Jesus. As a result of coming to Jesus, something else happened. They tasted of kiss. The word is, prosimeno, they tasted the goodness. What this kiss is doing is basically drawing on Psalm 34, verse 8. Let's look at it. O taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes... These are people who have actually tasted it. As we continue reading this text, the one who tastes the Lord would have the Greek term theo remas, tasting the taste of the word. But it's not the logos, it's the remas. You have two basic terms for the Bible, the word of God. Remas is one, and logos is the other. Now, they're virtually synonymous. You can't really make the kind of distinction some people do, to the degree they do. Some say that the logos is the printed word, and rema is some kind of personal revelation of the Spirit. That's not true. What we can say is that the logos is objective. The Bible is the word of God, and Jesus is Jesus, and it's in the print. But the rema is when it becomes an experiential reality, a truth in our lives. Jesus is Jesus. He's the logo. But only when the logo comes to us in a personal way does the Bible really come alive. And that's the term that's used here. Logos poteos is the term in chapter 4 verse 12 that Paul is building up to in chapter 6. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword. The word there is not logos. It's just personal encounter. In other words, you can have an academic theologian, a scholar who knows Greek and Hebrew perfectly, but he's not born again. He'll have the logos in some way, but the logos will not have become a personal experience in his life. They'll be purely the intellectual. The Bible in the hands of a man like that is useless. It's only somebody with God's Spirit inside of him who has partaken of the Holy Spirit. That's what Paul is saying here. He's partaken of the Holy Spirit, this objective truth, the logos. Now is the rema. These are people who have really come to some kind of personal experience and faith in Jesus. Partakers. Metopos genesentes. Now, in Luke chapter 5 verse 7, this word is translated in the English Bible. In other words, there were people who became our comrades, camaraderie. They were one of us. Not people who were never one of us. They were one of us. They were saved. And they partake of the heavenly gifts. Chris, Chris, Ephraim. This is a hate text in Gemini as a phrase, not as a word. It occurs only one place in the Bible in this phrase. Using the word, not charism, grace, but Chris. We can say God's grace is in some way for everybody. But this is not the word charism. It's more than the general type of grace that God gives to all people. Now, the reason I point this out is because Calvinists, arguing from Calvin's Institute, were trying to say that, well, it meant that they didn't come all the way. They only came part of the way. That's their argument. This is the basic argument of people who are Calvinists. But the text simply does not support that. What Calvinists do is what a lot of other people do. They begin with a presupposition, and then they have to begin doing monkey tricks, but that's not what the text in its context in any way supports. These were people who knew the Lord. Now, I'm breaking it down from the Greek, but then we'll just read the whole thing all together, if you would press on. Then it says, if they commit apostasy, if they go away, verse 6. Now, that word for apostasy, or if they have then fallen away, is not apostasia. It's not apostasia. Apostasia is something different. This is another word. It's a Greek conditional expressed in the Pardes Divor, paratisontos. It goes against the following argument. There's an argument that these people were Jews who believed, and the writer of Hebrews was saying to them, look, there's no way you can go back to Judaism now. It's impossible. There's no longer a sacrifice outside of where you are, as it says in chapter 10. If you can't go back, this is what it means. You've got to stay where you are. And when you read it in that context, it has nothing whatsoever to do with saying you can't fall away. That is an argument some people try to put. If the word was apostasia, that would be one thing. But the word is not apostasia. The word is paratisontos. Paratisontos goes directly against it. It means something very different. It means falling away from a standard. Apostasia comes from an entirely different Greek word altogether. The Greek root of apostasia means to depart. It means to depart. You were here, and now you've left us. This word, for falling away, means you haven't stopped believing, but you've stopped living what you do. So, if the argument that this was written to Jewish believers, and he was telling Jewish believers in the 5th century, that, look, you can't fall away now. You know, if you fall away, it's hopeless to go back to Judaism, because that's not going to work, the temple's going to be destroyed, etc. You've got to stay where you are. That's the kind of argument some people try to put. So, therefore, it means to these Jews who believe, they can't go back to living up to the youthful of a Christian life, but now you've not departed from the belief. That exactly fits the context. Chapter 6 opens with, Therefore, leaving the elementary Christian life, when you find people, we see what they're from, the Catholic and Simon people, they've been fooled by Christianity. They've been saved 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, and it's still easy. When you see people who become stagnant in their Christian life, never growing great, they never grow in the knowledge and understanding of the Word, well, people like that are really backsliding. When I was a kid, there was a Bob Dylan song, and one of the lines in his popular song was, He who is not busy being born is busy dying. If we're not going ahead, we're going to go backwards. The word here for falling away is not apostasia, it's not, I don't believe in Jesus anymore, I don't believe the Bible anymore, that's apostasia for being that, but this is not apostasia. This word here, and so by not leaving it anymore, they go into a form of change that is worse than they were before they were saved. You cannot meet the Lord Jesus and be the same person. You're either going to be better or you're going to be worse. If you come to Jesus, you're going to be better than you used to be, or you're going to be worse. But you cannot get saved and remain the same. You cannot come to taste of the Lord, to be partakers of the Holy Spirit, to experience a foretaste of the heavens. You're either going to be going one way, or you're going to begin going the other way. Much worse. And the use of the word here, anastoronta, means to crucify again, you're crucifying him again, anastoronta, and even holding in contempt what he did. Parvizeg metazonta. When you find people who were on one standard, and now they've reached that standard while still claiming to believe they're worse than before they believed, they're worse than before they believed. This is talking about backsliding. Now, having broken down the Greek meaning, I'm just going to read it. For in the case of those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gifts, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, sounds like Christians, doesn't it? It is Christians. And then have fallen away, not from believing, but from living what they believe. It's impossible to renew them against their repentance. Now, it doesn't mean if you fall away, you can't repent and come back. The Greek does not have a present tense in the sense that it's present, continuous, active. You know in John the fifth, where it says, He who is born of God, that does not mean that Christians were not swollen to sin. What it means is they do not practice. Now, because he's writing here to Jews, he's drawing on the Levitical mentality from Torah. The Torah has provision for inadvertent sin. It does not have provision for continually practiced willful sin. The Torah and Leviticus have provision for inadvertent sin. We have two Hebrew words for sin, two basic Hebrew words for sin. One means missing the mark, like shooting an arrow at a target, literally not going far enough. The other is going too far. We can sin by either not meeting up to God's standards or going beyond it. The Greek equivalent to Hamartino, Hamartino. Leviticus provided for inadvertent sin. It provided for sins of ignorance. He called this Borut in Hebrew. The high priest on Yom Kippur made his home in it. But there was not provision for people who practice willful sin, even under the Torah. And this connects directly with what we see in Scripture. Under the law of Moses, what would happen if the testimony of two or three witnesses? How much more is it going to happen to believers if they go back to this? This kind of departed. In the case of those who've once been enlightened, they came to the light, they saw Jesus, they tasted of the heavenly gift, and they've been made partakers of the Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. They've tasted it. And then have fallen away. You cannot fall away from where you have never been. The other argument here comes from John Calvin. In his Institute, Book 3, Chapter 2, Paragraph 11, he puts it this way. That they only saw a glimmering of light, that they heard the gospel preached and they understood it and knew it was the truth, but they never tasted it in the sense of, mm, they didn't really go all the way and made a full commitment. First of all, the text does not justify that. It's not a glimmering light. That's not what the word means. When you look at the text in its context, these were people who knew the truth. You cannot get goreas. The gift of God is eternal life for people. You don't get that gift unless you're a saint. You don't get that gift unless you're a saint. And you'll even find extreme expressions of compliment to life's interest. I think because a real commitment was made at one time, and that's not common, but there are those who believe it. I knew people who were teaching it. Let's turn now to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10 puts it in an eschatological context and connects it with ecclesiology, with church. In verse 25, it says, The faith not to fellowship in, or only assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, all the more, as you see here, that it's the aggregus of causa homer. The first of the... What's shown in a light heavy, in a light situation, becomes particularly shown in a heavy situation. In other words, fellowship is always important, but in the last days, it becomes especially important. If you can't stand together, you'll never stand alone. Now, putting it that way, we begin to understand there's a particular danger of... Jesus said many will fall away, didn't he? Many will be stricken by love. Backbiting is always possible, but in the last days, one of the things essential in God's economy to prevent backbiting is fellowship. Christians supporting each other. Don't cement it together. When you find people out of fellowship with other Christians, that is a direct reflection of the fact that they're out of fellowship with the Lord. There's something wrong. I don't care if it's five, six people meeting in a house, or if it's five, six hundred meeting in a church, as quick as God wants you to be. Now, if it's something beyond your control, no fault of your own, no choice of your own, God will see those believers through. But for us, when you find people out of fellowship, they're heading for trouble. It's not a coincidence that this introduces what comes next in verse 26. For if you go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice to sin. Hypotheos. Willfully. Again, he's drawing back to the Levitical concept of only provision for inadvertency. But then he says something else. If we, he must. He puts himself in the situation. The writer of Hebrews was not preaching at other people. He was also... And Paul does the same thing, doesn't he? Doesn't Paul say that? What if I lose it myself? How can you lose something if it can't be lost? But then he goes on saying something more. The knowledge of truth there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. Tens Aletheos means the body of truth. And the word for knowledge is not... Epignathos does not mean you know a truth about something. It means you know the full body of truth about... These were not people who understood only one aspect of the Christian life or of salvation. These were people who understood the full panorama of it. Now, somebody can be told Jesus died for our sins and Jesus came and he died to take our sin and give us eternal life. Somebody should know that. Okay? That is... But when you begin saying Jesus called us to co-die with him and we become new creations the same as he was when he rose from the dead. And when you begin to say his spirit was in us and when you begin to say the Bible is the document of the word of God these were not people who just heard something about that they really knew. They knew. And they knew the full body of truth. Tess Alephios But a certain terrifying expectation of judgment the fury of the fire which will consume the adversary everyone who set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy how much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who trampled underfoot the son of God and is regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has insulted the spirit of grace. You see, they can reach the point where they blaspheme the Holy Spirit. An inattentive backslider can reach the point where they blaspheme the Holy Ghost. That's what it's saying. That's exactly what it's saying. You have to do some monkey trick to try to say that this is talking about unsafe people. Tess Alephios, trampled underfoot. Chronon hegesonenos means literally treating as common the blood of Jesus and the word here is an abusing influence the influence of God's spirit. Yes, there is an unpardonable sin. Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 directly connect. An inattentive backslider. That's what it's saying. Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 go together. Hebrews 6 raises the possibility of an inattentive backslider blaspheme the Holy Ghost. Hebrews 10 reiterates the same point There is a point of no return. Again, go back to the prophet. He broke it and remade it. Now, that's not there for anyone to stare at. But it is there. When you read Jude the Pistil, the whole theme of Jude the Pistil is about backsliders in the church. Backslider in heart. What's it say? It continues in verses 28 and 29 of Hebrews chapter 10. Verse 28 and 29 Two or three witnesses will cause the law of Moses to be enacted with capital punishment. It will be worse for those who are Christians because they didn't have a way out. I think this means violated. I think this means violated. But doikeke. Doikeke. Do you think? In the Greek, this is rhetorical. Do you think? When you ask a rhetorical question, it means you know the answer. If this is what happened to the law of Moses, when they didn't even have the book, but you have the real thing, if that's what happened when people did this on the Torah, what do you think is going to happen to you if you go this way? Now, he's warning. He's warning. But he doesn't leave them there. He begins talking about our need for endurance in verse 36. We need to endure. We endure. Keep the life jacket on and keep swimming. Oh, we're saved by grace through faith. That's true. Water's faith. It continues, chapter 11, verse 1. Faith is the hypostasis, the assurance of things hoped for. In the Bible, hope equals future fasts. I guarantee you, if you'll keep following Jesus, you're going to go to heaven. If you don't take the life jacket off, you won't drown. I guarantee you. Not that I hope you won't drown. I guarantee you. We're playing with fire. And there's certainly people today who are playing with fire. There is no way you can say as John Calvin does that it means people who heard the gospel and came to a certain point simply not follow. They had to do it anyway. There is no way you can say it only meant that human believers could not possibly go back under the law. Talk about people who can fall away, depart from God's standards. They have to play games with the text instead of letting it say what it means and means what it says. Let's go a bit further. They'll tell you, Calvinists will tell you, righteousness is intuitive. And we have to understand what imputation means. It's an interesting term, impute. Turn with me to Hebrew, to Romans, chapter 6, please. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who die defend the living? Paul understands that imputed righteousness can be misunderstood. You actually have people in the Greek churches who believe that the new creation, that only the new creation matters. Paul understood that imputed righteousness can be misunderstood. That people could think it's okay to sin and still be saved. Well, again, let's look at what he's saying here. He's writing to believers. So, therefore, the people who believe in an unconditional, one-saved, all-saved, it means they were never saved to begin with. They were not never truly born to begin with. They were never born again. They were never really believers. They just made an empty or false profession or they had a religious experience or something. That certainly does not mean he's with six. It certainly does not mean he's with ten. Look at the product of promise. The product of promise has multiple interpretations. The rabbis say that apparently one of the interpretations, a backslide will wind up the way it ought to. And what does the Father say? Well, let's get back to this idea of imputation. Romans chapter four, verse ten. The Greek word is elodista. We get the word impute from the Vulgate, from the Latin, imputare. The Hebrew is choshev, meaning six. What impute means is to reckon. It's not that it's really hidden to us, but it's reckoning. God takes it into account that when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, God took our sin and put it on Him, and took His righteousness and put it on us. Even though He was righteous, unrighteousness was imputed to Him on the cross. Even though we are unrighteous, His righteousness is imputed to us when we come to the cross. Yes, righteousness is imputed. Abraham believed God and it was right. But then what happens? Yes, the righteousness is imputed, but not the truth. You cannot impute a scribe who was called to prove to be His disciple. Let's look, please, at the book of Revelation, chapter 3, verse 21. Who overcomes, I will grant of Him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. For he who has an ear can hear. To go to Heaven you must be an overcomer. Now, we cannot overcome in our own strength. We cannot overcome in our own strength. It has to be the righteousness and strength of Jesus. He does it for us. You can never swim the channel in a storm with your own strength. Somebody has to give you a life jacket. But once somebody gives you the strength, you must put it into operation. Quite clear. Just like little Tommy's monoramp thing. Heaven is for overcomers. God will give you the strength, the means, and the will to do it. But He also gives you the free will to make your choice. Let's go back to Revelation. Revelation 22, 14. Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gate of the city. Outside of the door are the robbers, the sorcerers, the immoral persons, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who commits and practices idolatry. Blessed are those who wash their robes. Now, some people wash their robes. But the Bible talks about those who make them dirty again. Doesn't it? We can always go back to the blood of the Lamb and wash our robes, but taking their robes off. Back to the seven churches in chapter 2, verse 11, Jesus says, He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death. He was writing here to born-again Christians. He was telling Christians that if they overcame, they would not be hurt by the second death. Obviously, there is a theoretical possibility at the very least that these people could fall away. Jesus actually says, I will blot your name out of the book of life. I would like anybody to explain to me logically. In chapter 3, verse 5, He who overcomes, the overcomers shall be clothed in white garments and I will not erase his name from the book of life. How can your name be erased from the book of life? They have to come with their presuppositions and do monkey things. Let's look at Matthew 25, 30. Cast out the worthless servant into the outer darkness in the place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. We all are given a certain amount of talents and our talents are always in proportion to our abilities. In chapter 25, verse 15, when Jesus comes back, He will not sit at the table with the highest reward but He won't throw over anything less than an inches barrel. Those who just bury their talents go to the loo faster. They have religion, they don't have Christianity. If you or I have a living relationship with Jesus, He's going to employ our talents. Now you know, for years and years and years in Israel, I led a congregation but I also had a day job and it wasn't easy having it and being a minister. I know how difficult it is but I did it because God gave me the grace and will to do it. A lot of ministers will stand up at a pulpit like this and tell you what you should be doing as if you were supposed to ignore the fact and say, you know what I'm saying? They don't know what it's like to go to thank God that for years and years and years Maybe the Lord will allow me to be careful if people are going to tell you to do this, they get paid for being spiritual. People just buried their talents when Paul was in prison. It was very true, wasn't it? It was insane, it was insane. Let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10. I do not want you to be unaware, my brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and passed to the sea and they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and all ate the same spiritual foods. What Paul does here is he uses the Exodus experience as a height to explain our salvation. Egypt is the well coming out of the world through the water of baptism, etc. The Exodus is a picture of our salvation. They all drank the same drink, spiritual drink, but they were drinking from the spiritual rock which followed them and the rock was the Messiah, it was Christ, Jesus in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not well pleased. Now these things happened to us that we should not crave evil things as they also craved and not to be idolaters as they were or act immorally as some of them did. Look at verse 11. These things happened to them as an example and they were written down to our instructions. These things happened to the ancient Hebrews and were written down What is it? They drank from the rock which was Christ, right? That's what it says. Yet they were idolaters and they were immoral. Don't be like them. Why? What does it say in Revelation chapter 22 again? It says that those who are immoral, those who are idolaters, outside of the persons who are immoral, outside of the idolaters in Revelation 22, 15, they go to hell. That's exactly what it says. That's the New Testament. How did they get this unconditional once saved, always saved? I know how they had me, which was saying you could work for your salvation and then put people in bondage or you go to the opposite and say you have no free will. Jesus didn't give you because you're denying He does not save us in our time. I'll say it again. He never came to save us. I'm going to keep going out and I intend to keep. We are being deluded into thinking He can save us. There's a balance. Let's look, please. I don't want to go on much longer. It's James chapter 20 But you are But are you willing to recognize you foolish fellow that faith without works is useless? It's truly airplanes. The model airplane and the life preserver is useless. If you don't put it on and swim it is useless. It's the gift. Jesus gave us back the potential to make a choice that we did not make. The idea of sin that we're not born with is not a sin He didn't order us. No. We all have sin and we can't be pursued. But He intervenes in the person of Jesus. Once we make the choice He then also gives us the ability We lost our free will. Everybody since Adam Jesus showed His back to the pilgrims. Once saved are we saved? Eternal security? Yes. You are eternally secure in Christ. Make sure you stay in Him. God bless you.